#bringsel

Mandana caught on so quickly to heart rate alerts that I decided to put it on the back burner for a while and prioritize the foundational skills in her training program. I still rewarded live alerts whenever she would offer them but I wasn’t too concerned with catching every episode or polishing up the alert sequence.

During each episode she would naturally stare me down to get my attention. I trained her to then nose boop my thigh to alert me to high heart rates. Unfortunately, she defaults to a persistent bark instead of the nose boop. She only ever had these outbursts when my heart rate was unusually high, but recently she has been alerting to my low HR. I am very grateful. I’m not used to Bradycardia and the symptoms are much worse for me, but because she has not been trained to do low HR alerts she has decided barking is the best type of alert.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my medical alert dog to have a barking fit every time my heart does something funky. Today I attempted to teach her to use a bringsel. Bringsels are tabs that clip on their collar and when it’s time to alert they bend their head down and grab the tab. It’s a very clear alert and fortunately for me it is incompatible with barking.

I already had some clip on badges she wears every time we go out and she caught on really quickly. I’m excited about this new polite alert. It’s also an alert she can do when she is in positions that are incompatible with a nose boop (such as being in her crate or centered between my legs).

Below is a clip from her first bringsel session. You can look forward to more cute alerts in the future 😍🐶⛑

We were having some issues with barking during alerts so I added a bringsel to her nose boop alert. This drastically decreased the frequency and intensity of the barking. It’s also much easier to stop the barking when it does happen by cueing an incompatible behavior (“show me your badge”)

Mandana loves her bringsel. It has increased her live alerts and she is much more polite about it. It’s a lot easier for her to alert me when she’s centered between my legs or I’m lying down and I’m less likely to misinterpret her intentions. It’s proven so useful that we’re going to keep prioritizing this lesson until she is fluent and can perform it outside and during PA training.

We are moving in two months and I would really appreciate her being able to do heart rate alerts in such an obvious way (flashing her medical alert badge) so we make a good impression on our new community. The apartment complex we’re moving to doesn’t allow big dogs, but I’ve seen some around. I know people fake their dogs being ESAs or SDs so they can move into places with restrictions so I look forward to proving ourselves as a legitimate team.